An energy providing entity typically employs a worker to physically go out to a customer's geographical location to visually read an energy meter to determine the amount of electricity that was supplied to a residential unit (i.e., customer unit). The energy provider is not able to obtain or provide further information about which devices inside the residential unit used how much energy. Typically, when determining the energy bill for a commercial unit, the energy provider estimates the total consumption of electricity for commercial unit (i.e., customer unit) by estimating the usage per customer unit based on an overall measurement of the energy usage in the greater geographical area that includes that customer unit.
An example of an energy provider that uses the above methods to establish energy usage for charging their customers is Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California, which supplies energy to about 13 million customer units. With the existing energy monitoring methods there is no good way for the energy provider or customer to obtain actual energy consumption information, such as more exact or more granular energy usage information. More granular data about actual energy consumption may be useful to the energy customers to help them determine how to reduce their energy costs and how to conserve energy.
The present way customers receive feedback on their energy usage is through a monthly bill that their energy provider sends them. The bill does not break down the total amount of energy consumption into a more granular form. The information a customer receives from a monthly total energy consumption bill is not timely or detailed enough to provide energy usage feedback that would enable a customer to adjust their individual energy consumption or pinpoint possible problems with their energy consumption devices.
Energy providers do not have the ability to effectively provide more granular information with their current electrical grid systems. Current electrical energy grid systems are a collection of transmission lines, substations, and transformers that deliver electricity from a power plant to a customer unit. Besides the electrical grid systems not being capable of obtaining more exact or more granular usage information, these systems are not able to effectively scale or extend to provide communications with newly implemented energy usage monitoring devices. These systems are also not able to provide energy usage information in real-time. These systems are also not able to process the large amounts of information that would be received from a large customer base, if for example the information received were to come from millions of customers that have multiple electrical monitoring devices inside their current energy consumption customer units. The existing systems are also not able to provide access to data or presentation of the usage data that would be associated with the usage of those electrical monitoring devices in real-time.